International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / In a study sponsored by the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, California, Toyon Research Corporation, Goleta, California, demonstrated that shaped pattern antennas could be used to mitigate interference caused by telemetry signals on GPS systems. Using a technique for fixed reception pattern antenna (FRPA) design, Toyon built and tested a GPS antenna that minimizes reception of telemetry signals from a known location.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper discusses ongoing regulatory effects on efforts aimed at developing data infrastructures that assist test engineers in achieving information superiority and for maintaining their information, and on possible architectural frameworks for resolving the engineer’s need versus the regulatory requirements. Since current commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems are targeted primarily at business environments such as back office applications, financial sectors, and manufacturing, these COTS systems do not provide sufficient focus for managing the unique aspects of flight test data and associated artifacts (documents, drawings, pretest data, etc.). This paper presents our ongoing efforts for deploying a storage infrastructure independent enterprise data management system for maintaining vital up-to-date information and for managing the archival of such data.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Range Safety Systems are used for destruction of a vehicle should a malfunction cause the vehicle to veer off course. All vehicles launched into space require implementation of a Range Safety System. For years the IRIG receivers have been used with relatively good success. Unfortunately, the IRIG receivers do not provide a high level of security. High alphabet receivers were later developed for use on the big launchers (Atlas, Delta, Titan, etc) and the manned missions (Shuttle) to provide added security. With the IRIG based system, several problems have occurred resulting in the loss millions of dollars worth of equipment. Due to the problems that have occurred it has become apparent that there is a need for a more secure, low cost, type of range safety receiver. This paper describes the design and development of the prototype EFTS system. Mission critical parameters are discussed including selection of the encryption and forward error correction algorithms. Actual measured performance including message error rate characteristic is presented.

ITC/USA 2010 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Sixth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 25-28, 2010 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / Development is currently underway to produce a dual redundant Flight Termination System (FTS) capable Missile Telemetry Section. This FTS will mainly consist of a conformal wraparound antenna, two flight termination safe & arm (FTS&A) devices, two flight termination receivers (FTR), two explosive foil initiators (EFI) and destruct charge. This paper will discuss the current status of the development of these FTS components along with the process of obtaining the Flight Certification from Range and System Safety to fly this newly outfitted missile on a governmental test range.

ITC/USA 2009 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fifth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 26-29, 2009 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / At about Mach number 10 and above, a high energy plasma field forms around a vehicle. This plasma sheath has a high attenuation factor that can cause communications black out. No practical solutions to communicating through a plasma sheath are known. In addition to standard real time data needs for test, a driving requirement to solve this problem is that most solutions will have to be designed into the vehicle. Modifications of vehicles designed to travel at these Mach numbers, especially any exterior modifications, will be extremely difficult due to effects on aerodynamics, thermal protection, and the materials used. A list of possible solutions to communications through hypersonically induced plasma has been collected over several years. This list was added to and verified during the Workshop on Communications through Plasma during Hypersonic Flight. Pros and cons of these potential solutions have been discussed and documented as well. The workshop also included a vote by the attending experts on what solutions are most promising. This paper reviews these solutions, their pros and cons, and a recommended way forward to solving this problem.

ITC/USA 2009 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fifth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 26-29, 2009 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Following-up on an ITC 2006 paper, "From RF to bits with Synthetic Beamforming", we follow the development and fielding of a Digital Beamforming (DBF) Antenna. This antenna, built for an airborne Telemetry application, supports 10 individual polarization-diverse beams and immediately converts RF to IF at the antenna element through a suite of LNBs. The IF is then digitized and all subsequent processing is performed through an array of 200+ FPGAs, including DBF, optimal combining, demodulation, and IF upconversion. We present our Model-Based Design approach, which allowed us to develop and test the system incrementally and rapidly, particularly during the transition from factory testing to flight operations, where several unexpected problems were discovered. Our software tool set enabled us to dissect the System behavior via post-mission replay, and our detailed simulations were instrumental in developing mitigation quickly. The System-level impacts and root causes of some of these issues are also discussed. We believe the flexibility of DBF and the modular software architecture were key in quickly mitigating many of these unforeseen real-world issues without hardware modification.

ITC/USA 2008 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fourth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 27-30, 2008 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / Network-based telemetry systems are increasingly being used to improve the flexibility and longevity of flight test systems. Modern network-based flight test systems utilize large numbers of devices including high-speed network switches, data acquisition devices, recorders, and telemetry interfaces, all of which must be managed in a coordinated fashion. The move to network-based testing provides the ability to build a standards-based System Management interface which can status and control a diverse set of devices. The benefits include the ability to easily tailor System Management tools to support many different styles of user interactions and to quickly integrate new types of devices. While the new capabilities presented by System Management are exciting, the very openness of the system presents challenges to ensure that future growth will be seamlessly supported. This paper will discuss issues encountered while implementing flight test System Management tools for a network-based telemetry system.

ITC/USA 2008 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fourth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 27-30, 2008 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / The Integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) Project established a standards working group to address the integrated management of telemetry network systems and to ensure interoperability among various pieces of equipment. The group has been studying the benefits and drawbacks of various system management technologies with the goal of identifying a set of management interfaces which will provide long-range benefit to a large and diverse telemetry test system. This paper discusses control, configuration, status, performance, and fault management. It addresses these from several viewpoints such as multi-test articles, multi-ranges, and dynamic test environments.

ITC/USA 2008 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fourth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 27-30, 2008 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / ARINC 664 presents the designers of data acquisition systems challenges not previously seen on other aircraft avionic buses. Among the biggest challenges are providing the test instrumentation system with the capacity to process two redundant Ethernet segments that may be carrying packet traffic at near wire-line speed. To achieve this level of performance, the hardware and software must not only perform mundane operations, like time stamping and simple virtual link MAC filtering, but also need to implement core ARINC 664 functions like redundancy management and integrity checking. Furthermore, other TCP/IP operations, such as IP header checksum, must also be offloaded to the hardware in order to maintain real-time operation. This paper describes the implementation path followed by TTC during its development of an ARINC 664 network monitor used in a large commercial aircraft flight test program.

ITC/USA 2007 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Third Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2007 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Network-based instrumentation systems are rapidly replacing traditional fixed serial interconnected instrumentation in both commercial and military flight test environments. Modern network-based flight test systems are composed of large numbers of devices including high-speed network switches, data acquisition devices, recorders, telemetry interfaces, and wireless network transceivers, all of which must be managed in a coordinated fashion. Management of the network system includes configuring, controlling, and monitoring the health and status of the various devices. Configuration by hand is not a realistic option, so algorithms for automatic management must be implemented to make these systems economical and practical. This paper describes the issues that must be addressed for managing network-based flight test systems and describes a network management approach that was developed and employed to manage a large-scale network-based flight test system.